Charlottesville!

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

4:1  O mankind, have taqwa of your Lord, the One who created you from a single soul, and from it He created his mate, and from them both, He spread many men and women.  And fear Allah from who you demand your mutual rights, and do not cut off familial ties.  Surely, Allah is ever an all-watcher over you.

Recent events give us pause to consider from where we have come and to where we are going.  Allah SWT created us from a single soul.  Out of the substance of this earth, Allah SWT brought together dust and water and nafs and breathed into it ruh.  We are but animated sounding clay - Teen. 

55:14. He created man
From sounding clay
Like unto pottery,

And He endowed us with aql (reason) and with fitrah (morality), so that we could fulfill our purpose - to worship and serve Him.  He endowed us all with free will so that this worship and service would be absolutely voluntary, given freely.  And He promised us that if we turned toward Him in love and trust - in taqwa - we would have no fear or grief, but would be rewarded in ways we cannot imagine.

We were all promised this.  We are all capable of making this covenant with Allah SWT.  We all have equal capacity to come to Allah SWT in Islam!  

But soon enough, our unity and equality was shattered.



7:12. (God) said: "What prevented
Thee from bowing down
When I commanded thee?"
He said: "I am better
Than he: Thou didst create
Me from fire, and him from clay."

The Jinn, of whom Iblis is their progenitor, were created from smokeless fire.


55:15. And He created Jinns
From fire free of smoke:

Allah SWT had commanded the Malaikah to bow to Adam.  Iblis was among them because he had, up to that point, been a model servant of Allah, the most pious of the Jinn.  But, this proved an unpassable test for him.  While the angles bowed, Iblis refused.  He disobeyed Allah's command.  And he did so out of arrogance, kibriyya, because Adam was created out of a different substance.

Allah SWT throws Iblis out of His grace, but gives him respite for a time.  Instead of gratitude or repentance, Iblis vows to destroy mankind and lie await for him even upon Allah's own path, the Sirat al Mustaqim.  How we see this happening today with terribly misguided individuals falling prey to the brainwashing of Shaytans.  Which worldly forces they may work for is not as relevant as the fact that they ultimately work of Shaytan.  And they lie await on the very path, claiming to preach Islam.  They tell you not to talk to other Muslims, or to Shuyuk.  They are the liars and the ones doing Shaytan's bidding.  And many of them are unaware of this.  May Allah SWT guide them and remove them from the hellfire - because that will be their fate if they do not repent.

Any instigation to racism or feelings of superiority is from Shaytan.  And our Ummah is deeply contaminated with it.

Racism in Islam

It is tragic that in these times where all of us face discrimination for being Muslim, we ourselves, are infected with kibriyya and racism.  Arabs consider themselves superior to everyone else.  They think that because they speak Arabic, they have more knowledge of deen, and they treat other ethnic groups like idiots.  South Asian scholars, or Indonesian scholars, or any other scholars are ignored or ridiculed.  But, South Asians also despise Arabs... and African Americans.  And European and American converts are talked to as if they were either abject sinners or complete idiots.  I have often heard those "born" in Islam say that Hamza Yousuf or Siraj Wahhaj are nice but they "no not know Islam."  What they "do not know" is actually the bala of culture, not the teachings of this deen.

Converts have to actually study this deen, actually read and learn.  But, instead of benefiting from such acute study, Muslims parade "White Converts" around.  "By all means, tell us how great Islam is, but shut your mouth when it comes to advising us as to what the deen really says."

And all of us cling to cultural practices, even when they do not conform with what was given to us in the Qur'an and the Sunnah.  Egyptians and Africans still practice female genital mutilation, and twist hadith to make it mustahabb.  South Asians blindly follow an opinion of a "scholar" even when it completely contradicts ayaat of the Qur'an.  We insist on traditional practices for weddings including the giving of enormous dowries, and then fail to give the dowry to the bride, as required by Shariah. We refuse to marry our children to good practicing brothers or sisters because they are not from our group. And American converts have sometimes clung to long held practices including Sunday gatherings in preference to gathering on Friday.  And all of us have gleefully embraced the customs of non-Muslims in a slavish effort to assimilate - to show off how superior we are to other immigrants, but how "non-Muslim" we have become.

All of these behaviors are rooted in kibriyya, the sin of Shaytan.  Anytime we think we are superior or crave to appear superior, we are in sin.  

You are not superior.  You are better than that.  You are a human being, equal to all other human beings in the eyes of Allah SWT, and the only thing that distinguishes you from any other person is your taqwa of Allah SWT - and even then, only Allah SWT judges that quality in you.  

Taqwa is not something that you can show off.  It is not something you can fake.  You either have taqwa or you do not.  It is rooted in your relationship to Allah SWT, to your utter surrender in love and absolute trust in your Rabb.  To cling to Him with your whole being, to fall into His arms, and His alone, such is taqwa.  And having taqwa is not a race, it is not a competition you can win against others.  It is a sincere, honest, voluntary submission to the One who created you.  You are competing only with your own capacity for taqwa.  Did you do the very best of which you are capable? Only Allah SWT will judge.

Charlottesville!

We may have reached a point in human history that comes once in a while, an opportunity to really affect change.  When Ceausescu fell in Romania, he began his day with a rally on the main square.  All his supporters stood before him, cheering.  But then, there was a pause in his speech, and in the distance a chant could be heard.  Hundreds of voices chanting one word - the name of the town who had risen in rebellion and had suffered a murderous crackdown.  "Timisoara!"  Ceausescu blinked, he flinched, and then he ran. The chant on the lips of thousands of countrymen, brought down a dictator.

We cry now too!  "Charlottesville!"  Now may be one of those times when Shaytan blinks... when his sin, that infects our Ummah, infects all humanity, ends.

Allah Akbar! For Allah truly is the Greatest, and we are but his servants.